John Key Takes It To Poor Women. Reliving 1991

The latest tranche of welfare reforms has now been announced. Predictably it has been met with acclaim on the right and cries of benefit bashing on the left.And how did that No Hopey, Changey stuff work for you after 1991, National?

Widowed Kylee Guy and son following the murder of husband Scott Guy. Her future is tougher under National. Image TV3

The “Benefit Slashers” image was probably the single biggest factor in losing the 1999 election and ¬†2002; in 2005 it was the second biggest factor after Don Brash and his mates: The Exclusive Brethren.¬†

Watch history repeat itself later in this decade. John Key could do a great big cakewalk down the middle of New Zealand; he could do a big cakewalk with Gerry through Aotea Square, down Lambton Quay, through the Octagon and pull Jesus out of a freshly resurrected Christchurch Cathedral and Shearer is still a shoe-in if the economy doesn’t improve and hardship stories from kiwi battlers become pronounced.¬†

Every good conspiracy theorist who voted for Winston Peters “knows” that JK is the smiling assassin and was just biding time to take it to the poor.¬†

It’s a little more complicated. No offense to anyone who voted Winston and I’m a conspiracy theorist myself but instead of inhaling the old vox pop stories offered up by the ‘traditional’ News Media, APN and Fairfax, I use my Housewife Logic to work out the “truth”.¬†

One truth is, women did nothing for wonen in 1991 and they are doing nothing now.¬†

For overseeing the legendary welfare cuts of 1991 as Minister of Social Welfare, Jenny Shipley is ¬†considered one of the most malignant women in the history of New Zealand to 50% of the population. She is surpassed only by Ruthanasia Ruth Richardson in the “Women Who Throw Other Women Under The Bus’, stakes. I guess Paula is in line for the bronze.¬†

In 1991, huge social shifts had just occurred. Women were leaving their loser husbands in droves. Most of them had children and with little access to work and wage inequality, they were reliant on the DPB. They were just able to survive on this welfare and had the ground ripped from them when benefits were slashed. That’s when, for a myriad of reasons from the political spectrum, New Zealand no longer became a great place to live. Instead of targeting the child-bashing losers, and supporting real life families with re-training, punishing women for the red-neck vote became a blood sport. Everyone was treated the same and every woman on the DPB became stigmatised. After all the ballyhoo, National did a tits job at creating placements for beneficiaries; socialism gained a greater toehold and National was eventually booted.¬†

I can’t believe there were no other solutions to the universal policy of cutting entitlements and targeting women. Probably there was a benefit bubble where this group of babyboomer women could have raised their children and had access to re-training with free education. New Zealand would never have been exposed to divisive anti women baby-factory rubbish.¬†And it should have been the women who pointed this out to the class of 1991.¬†

Same scenario, different generation and this time it is the children of those same baby-boomers who are now being targeted across the board as bludgers.¬†

From the Herald today: “Nothing arouses popular ire quite as much as the possibility solo mothers can have more babies on the domestic purposes benefit”.

Me: This says to a certain element in society: “A woman’s place isn’t making mistakes or requiring help. A woman’s place is cooking my eggs Biarch; on the back of my fist, or in the grave”.¬†

And once again a woman is wheeled out to try and sell us what the same class of 1991 have prescribed.¬†We know the current crop of women in the National Cabinet are just the fluffers¬†for the main stars, but we love to hate them anyway. Perhaps we hate them because they have no real power.¬†

No matter how they are spun to us as Tuff Luvin, Green Hotcakes, we know they aren’t doing it hard like some kiwi women and they seem to be ignoring the pain being caused by new policies. We know they wouldn’t act anyway, because of some unseen greater cause. We tolerate the do-gooder younger breed who are just weaning and we have a xenophobic paranoia about the Bennett’s and the Collins of politics. They have broken ranks with the sisterhood with across-th-board changes to benefits that treat a widowed 40 yr old; a divorced stay at home Mum, with the very few problematic young un’s.You should have staged the changes John and Co. Now you have several PR problems on your hands.

Anti Women PR Problem 1.How does National sell canning the widows benefit? The widows get shifted over to the all-purpose benefit on a lesser rate. You know, so they can wait it out until they too die, or go on the super, on a bit more hardship. Big fail. Women alone tend to help in the community and whatever the savings, the PR cost for National will be great. Perhaps this benefit should be means tested (life insurance payouts can be substantial) but until women have similar pay and job prospects as men, it does no harm to retain it.How many millions of dollars can the Kylee Guys of the world possibly cost? Maybe she will support herself. What if she has no education and her husband and her were planning to farm together. With no husband and no father for the children it may be at least 14 years before she can re-train. If you are in this bracket you inevitably fall through the cracks, and for no lack of hard work.

The oft maligned DPB was originally introduced to address the issues you write of. Basically it enabled women to escape violent abusive relationships. It was never intended to be open ended nor a way of life & most recipients treat it as such as witnessed by the average, relatively short, time spent on the benefit.

You have, however, understated the problems created by those who treat the DPB as a way of life & a breeding platform. Although those with vested interests (eg Tariana Turea) do their level best to make sure that the status quo continues these women have a real presence in the poorer areas of NZ.

Now I don’t really care if these baby factories smoke,drink, take drugs, gamble, fornicate on the roof & drop dead at 30 from the excesses. What does concern me is the welfare & future of the children these shitbags conceive. With few exceptions they will be tomorrows criminals, unemployed & the solo mothers of the future.

In my opinion JK & National have had to take a broad brush stance to targeting the ferals & widows et al are the unfortunate collateral damage. In this day of political correctness it is impossible to take a surgical approach even if we know who is ripping off the system.

Of the various beneficiaries the generally uncomplaining taxpayer supports, the DPB is the only one that creates problems for the future. Eventually the terminally unemployable, the handicapped, the elderly & the sick die & their problems die with them. In the breeding for bucks game we see the creation of the problems subsequent generations will have to contend with.

http://www.blogger.com/profile/12538783137602201932 Monique Watson

I agree with what you say about the ferals who breed a new generation of rapists and druggies. But it’s about a 1000 a year from what I can see from a 2010 MSD report and John Key says it himself, they’re a certain demographic, so they could be targeted without applying a global policy. If you use too wide a brush you tar everyone with the message and that is anti-women and causes more issues than it solves not the lease of allowing “Socialism” a toehold. John Key will be unwittingly giving all women on the DPB a bad name. He’s walked into a poor babies deprived of their Mum’s PR trap

http://www.blogger.com/profile/11495995981682025219 nasska

I concede that JK has left himself exposed to the “kids torn from their mother’s breast” crap but it’s done now so we’ll have to see how it pans out. Most of the dyed in the wool, hard core feminists are not National voters anyway but they have been given more ammunition to use.

You haven’t won me over on two points:

1) Taking your figure of 1000 children/year born to dysfunctional mothers, that, over only one generation, would be sufficient to populate a large town. We can hardly dismiss lightly the financial & social effects of no hopers breeding at will & encouraged by the perverse incentive of more funding as a reward. The people paying for this onanthon are taxpayers such as you & me who probably have a few things we would like to provide for our own kids/grandkids instead.

2) ….”so they could be targeted without applying a global policy”…. How? The minute a demographic is surgically targeted the PC wankers will be tripping over themselves to cry racialism or ‘benebashing’. Anyone who genuinely tries to address the core problems directly is on a hiding to nothing.